Carving A Wood Shovel From A Single Board

I start by laying out the shovels shape the humming sound you’re hearing is from my vacuum bag…sorry about that! I’ll first rough out the bowl of the shovel using my adze Okay, so I’m gonna take a quick break from carving this shovel I’m tell you right now it is some physical work and it’s wearing me out So I want to tell you about simply safe today’s sponsor now I’ve been using simply safe in the shop for over a year now in monitor shop 24/7 from fire theft flood and freeze I also have cameras in here so I can check on the shop whenever I need to now simply safe was kind enough to send It in a separate unit for my home And I’m gonna take y’all in there and have June and Johnny and my two kids help me set this up So the whole system works off this home base Which actually my daughter really got a kick out of when the minute I turned it on and started talking She was with very intrigued but basically all your devices connected this home base you’ve got motion detectors glass break detectors entry sensors a freeze detector water detector fire You got a camera and so you have these sensors all connecting to the home base It’s very very easy to set up the system like I said monitors 24/7 it costs 50 cents a day and the best part about it is there’s no contract so You’re not tied into anything that it works in emergency situations so if you lose power you lose Wi-Fi the System still can’t function and the cool thing about this home system is they sent me a doorbell as well? And I’ve actually never had a doorbell on my house So this is a great reason to hook up a doorbell So I’ve been having a lot of fun playing around with a doorbell with my kids I’ll give them my phone so they can watch and then I’ll jump in front of the camera and kind of freak scare them They think it’s hilarious totaled that thing so like I said I’ve been using simply safe for a while now on the shop nothing but happy with how it works the app works very well Excited to have it in the house now. So thank you very much Simply safe for sending that you guys should definitely go check it out and get your security system at simply safe calm /and your all’s thanks again is still to say for sponsoring the video now, let’s get back to carving this shovel I continue the roughing out process with my big gouge I have way more control over this tool in comparison to the adze I can now begin refining the shape and removing the larger tool marks with my travisher This tool takes a fairly heavy cut and will clean off the tool marks quickly Next I use my Clifton 500 convex spokeshave to refine and smooth out the shovel bowl even more This tool does a great job of working close to the edges where it transitions from curved to flat finally I scrape and sand the bowl surface This process took me about 5-6 hours of work. I took a lot of breaks to rest! Next I use my 95 year old Oliver bandsaw to rough out the shovels shape here I’m re-sawing the handle down to around 1.75″ thick I’ll stop this cut at the shovel bowl I rough out the backside of the shovel bowl using my scrub plane notice I’m working across the grain…I can remove more material faster this way now I decide to stop working on the shovel bowl and shape the handle. I roughed this section out with a drawknife then shaped it with my spokeshaves I’m attempting to cutout the handle hole with a coping saw. At 1.75″ thick I was using too fine of a blade in my saw I thought I could make it work…you know brute force and ignorance! the blade broke! So I reached for my router and free handed the waste out It appears like I took it all in one pass but I did this in multiple passes Now I use my rasp to shape the handle round Once I’ve shaped the handle I add a nice chamfer detail using a gouge The handle was much more difficult to carve than I expect…I spent around 4 hours working on it. with the handle done I can finish shaping the backside of the shovel I’m using my 4 1/2 smoothing plane to refine the shape Here I’m using my wooden spokeshave which is always set for a heavy cut One of the last steps to shaping is creating a somewhat flat surface at the shovel edge I’m using my Lie Nielson spokeshave set for a fine cut here I spent some time sanding and smoothing the shovel which mostly is not shown in the video. You can always skip this process but I like to clean up the tool marks with sandpaper The final step is to oil it with Danish oil That’s some beautiful cherry…thanks for tuning in!

One Reply to “Carving A Wood Shovel From A Single Board”

Thanks for tuning in everybody!! I'll just say this shovel was a ton of work and my arms are still feeling it. It took about two and half days to complete but I think it came out looking pretty good. I hope everybody enjoys the build!